The client has moved in, but nothing was signed off

Handover happened in the human sense: keys, furniture, a bottle of something. What never happened is the paper version, and on your account the difference is thousands.

What hangs off the certificate nobody issued

• Half the retention. The first release is triggered by the certificate of practical completion, not by the client moving in. No certificate, no trigger. See the first half of retention.
• The end of delay damages. Liquidated damages run to practical completion. While it is uncertified, you are formally still late, on a job the client is living in.
• The start of the defects period. The clock to the second retention release cannot end because it never began.
• Insurance. Responsibility for insuring the works typically shifts at practical completion, so an uncertified handover leaves who insures what genuinely unclear, which suits nobody, including them.

Occupation is your evidence, not your enemy

Practical completion means the works are complete for practical purposes: the client can take possession and use the building for what it was built for. A client actually living or trading in it is the strongest everyday evidence that this point has been reached. Some contracts say this expressly for possession taken early; most standard forms at least separate genuine incompleteness from snags, and minor items do not prevent completion.

The letter that starts the clock

One page to whoever certifies, the architect or contract administrator, or the client where there is none, copied to the client:

“The works reached practical completion on [date], and you took possession and have occupied the building since. We ask you to issue the certificate of practical completion recording that date. If you consider the works incomplete, please identify what remains, and we will attend to genuine items; we note that minor snags do not prevent practical completion.”

Three outcomes, all better than silence: the certificate arrives; a snag list arrives, which you close and then re-ask; or the refusal is put in writing, which gives you something specific to challenge instead of a fog.

Escalation, matched to your client

On jobs the Construction Act covers, whether practical completion has occurred is exactly the kind of question adjudication (section 108) answers in about a month, and a certifier resisting the evidence of an occupied building argues uphill. On a contract with a residential occupier (section 106) there is no adjudication: the route is the contract, then a letter before action, with occupation itself as your central evidence.

What to do this week

1. Fix the date. When did they actually take possession? Photos, the handover email, the day the alarm code changed. That date is the anchor of everything.

2. Send the letter above, and diarise fourteen days.

3. The day the certificate lands, run the consequences: retention drop in the next application, defects period end date in the calendar, second release date in the calendar.

Where the information stops

Whether occupation on your facts amounts to practical completion under your particular wording, and whether damages already deducted can be recovered, are judgement calls a solicitor should sanity-check before you adjudicate or issue over them.